


Nothing Left

by southsideglitter



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, South Side Serpents - Freeform, Sweet Pea being brooding on his motorbike, Sweet Pea has had it officially, Sweet Pea leaving Riverdale, Teen Homelessness, The Farm (Riverdale), Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 09:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/southsideglitter/pseuds/southsideglitter
Summary: That's it. Sweet Pea is done. Like, completely, totally done. If Fangs is gone, then so is he. He hunkers lower on his bike, eyes narrowed against the stinging rain, bike aimed for the highway and beyond that, who knows.aka: Sweet Pea trying not to think over his relationships with Toni and Fangs and all the bonkersness of life in Riverdale as he finally leaves town for good.aka: a send-off for my big brooding biker baby in what's probably my last ever Riverdale fic.





	Nothing Left

That's it. Sweet Pea is done. Like, completely, totally _done_. If Fangs is gone, then so is he. He hunkers lower on his bike, eyes narrowed against the stinging rain, bike aimed for the highway and beyond that, who knows. He focuses on the cold bite in the air, turning his fingers numb on the handlebars. He concentrates on the growl of the engine underneath him, the trees by the roadside strobing past. He keeps his mind blank, as best he can. He never was very good at that, but he's got time to practise now. Because he can't let what the Keller kid said – that Fangs ascended – he can't let that in. Whether that means dead or just transported far from here, it amounts to the same thing: gone. Sweet Pea grits his teeth and fights the thought away, drags his attention back to the stones spitting up from under his wheels, the rumble of thunder in the distance, his mind spinning through calculations of how much cash is in his wallet. How much gas that could buy.

There's nothing left for him here any more.

His first thought after he heard about Fangs had been TT. That maybe, if they were still tight the way they used to be, the two of them would have been able to join forces and figure something out. But not any more: Toni's tangled up in her own world with Red, and he doesn't blame her for that. Not as much as he could. Should. Love makes people do crazy things. That's something he's always known. Sweet Pea's got a suspicion that when it comes to Red being crazy, they haven't seen anything yet. So Toni's wrapped up in other things, and he gets it, honest, he does. But he'd be lying if he said it didn't sting.

Their friendship had been on the rocks for a while, but weirdly Sweet Pea had thought that that thing that happened during _Heathers_ could have been a way back, to how things were before. It had come out of nowhere: what with the stupid rivalry between the Pretty Poisons and the Serpents, he'd barely spoken to Toni in weeks. But then she'd grabbed him in the student lounge, fisted a hand in his jacket, dragging him towards the theatre. And Sweets had followed, unsure but willing, and it had summoned up all the memories of every hook-up from the past few years. Times when they'd been stupid or sweet, drunk or hurt, furious at the world or just wanting some comfort, a distraction. Or other times, easier to explain: fuelled by hormones and whatever intoxicants they could get their hands on. Down at the quarry with the others in summer, after-hours at the Wyrm, in his trailer with the music on and rain hammering on the tin roof, when he'd tell her to take his bed over another night in her tent, but she'd smirk and say they could share.

It never used to take much.

Sweet Pea sifts through those recollections: some distorted, from the drugs or the booze or the adrenaline of whatever was going down at the time, but he remembers enough. Toni's candy-coloured hair under his hands, the bruises they both had from the chains they'd used at the protest when South Side High shut down. Riot night, the night they thought Fangs was gone, when all Toni could do was wait for Sweets to return, praying he'd be back in one piece. The grotty sofa in the Wyrm back office afterwards; no lights on, holding tight to each other, tear-wet eyes the only soft gleam in the dark. And better times: his birthday one year when she'd given him a photo album she'd made of all the pictures she'd taken that summer. Toni had smacked a kiss on his cheek for every year, laughing while everyone else counted out loud. It was a stand-in gesture, a replacement for the cake and candles they couldn't afford, but those kisses were as bright and sweet as any frosting or candle flame. And then, on the last one, he'd turned his head so his lips caught hers, and everyone cackled and whooped but neither of them pulled away.

So, yeah. It had happened before. Nothing serious. A on-off constant over the years. But when Toni gripped a fist into his shirt like she had so many times before, something in Sweet Pea surged. Crazy as it was, the time, the place, this was familiar territory. He knew what was expected. Knew he could make Toni feel better, feel good. He'd missed that more than he ever thought he would.

_(He didn't think about wanting the distraction from how Josie and Andrews had been looking at each other, or the way Keller got that softness to his voice every time he talked to Fangs. Instead he focused on how Toni had been killing it with that choreography she'd put together, how he's proud of her, no matter what, and she still does something to him.)_

But it hadn't happened, in the end. And after Toni had split, looking stressed and sorry and sad, he'd glanced at Peaches like _how about you_ (because fuck it, he's still a teenager with urges that have nothing to do with the fucked-up nostalgic affection he feels about Toni, and he'd alreadly scrambled down to his underwear). But Peaches just scrabbled her clothes together and said _not fucking likely, creep_, and honestly, it's not what he needs.

His cuts and bruises from the altercation with the Pretty Poisons have only just healed. He's still having nightmares about being left to bury Joaquin's body while Jughead went on some gay Kerouac adventure with Fucking Andrews. He's been doing more and more dangerous jobs with what's left of the Serpents, to raise money for Fangs' mom's hospital bills. Every day, it's something else. It's been a long day, a long week, a long year. Sweet Pea's _tired._ Everything aches. 

So when nothing happens with Toni and she doesn't even message him after to say something, anything, that feels like a sign. A sign that the frayed threads of their friendship have finally come apart. And by then Fangs was disappearing on him too, and that was one betrayal, one injury too many. Fangs who he already thought he'd lost once. Fangs who'd been his one constant in the time since then.

Fangs: small and pale in the hospital bed, guts taped up but beaming big when he finally came round from the surgery to find Sweet Pea there, fists clenched with worry and dark circles round his eyes from refusing sleep because he wanted to be there when Fangs woke up. That electric current of warmth and relief when realised Fangs was okay. Then having to tell Fangs what had gone down; seeing fear and hurt flicker over his features, then his smile getting fixed in place again, this time with an edge. Sweet Pea had seen it enough times to know the score. Fogarty was putting an act on, to protect Pea, and himself. Still, for that moment, it was enough: to be there with Fangs after so many hours of thinking the worst, of feeling raw and hollow all at once, of hunger and exhaustion and _no, Topaz, you go home, I'm staying 'til he wakes up_.

The next thing Fangs did was ask for his knife, just in case the shooter came back.

Sweet Pea felt his battered heart fracture a bit further at that, but he couldn't argue. He got why Fogarty wanted a weapon. He understood that hunger for anything that'd make you feel even a tiny bit more ready to take on the world. So he'd fumbled in his jacket pocket for the blade, slid it under Fangs' pillow, then promised he'd do whatever it took to keep them both safe.

_Joaquin was here_, he'd told Fangs, to distract him from the thought of gunfire and bullets and mobs baying for blood. Fogarty's face lit up, and the cracks round Sweet Pea's heart splintered just a little bit more. _He was gonna help you get away. Take you to San Junipero, or somewhere. You know, if we'd been able to get you out in one piece. _

_Where is he now?_

Sweet Pea didn't know. Cursed himself for saying anything at all when he didn't have any answers, then plastered on a grin for Fangs' benefit and said _hiding out, I bet_.

Then Fangs came out of hospital, and Joaquin went to prison. Their camp got raided, again and again and again. Fangs' tent got trashed in one of those raids, but by then he was spending most nights in Sweet Pea's trailer anyway. Pea had a spare key cut, same as he'd done for Toni when her uncle kicked her out. For a while there, they got into as close to a routine as either of them had ever had. It was summer, which meant no school. A break from homework and a Principal who hated them and all the never-ending Bulldog drama. Hot, sticky July nights; temporary relief from having to sleep in all three of his hoodies and still wake up sore from shivering. Lodge taking over Pop's, giving them a permanent option of free food if they blitzed round there on their bikes and turned on the charm. TT was with Blossom and the entire town was obsessing over Andrews' trial, and between those two things, they weren't as vilified as they'd been before. Plus Josie was into him, or that's how it had seemed, and that had helped Sweet Pea feel better about sharing a bed with Fangs most nights. It was platonic between them, mostly, but. Sweet Pea couldn't help hoping, sometimes.

And after things got bad again, he held on that hope even tighter. Fangs reaching for him, in the middle of the night, mumbling Joaquin's name and Sweet Pea knowing he was dreaming about the corpse being dumped in their camp with that symbol carved into his head. Or Midge, pinned to the wall by the Black Hood and Fangs, in a cell, reeling and terrified. Fangs' skin clammy and his breathing shallow, Sweet Pea mumbling soothing words and holding on, hard enough to keep the night terrors down. Then staying awake long after Fangs had calmed down and sunk back into dreams. Sweet Pea staring at the tin roof of his trailer, thinking: _how much more of this are we gonna have to take? _

But he hadn't been prepared for all the other shit to come: Fangs' mom getting ill again, then the Farm, and the distance between them that came in slowly, by degrees, until one day he realised it had become a million-mile-wide canyon.

Then this. Ascended. Gone.

Sweet Pea grimaces, bites the inside of his cheek until pain floods through him and he tastes copper on his tongue. He's nearly at the town limits now. From there, he's not sure. Maybe head towards Toledo, see who's left at the old Jones salvage yard. He knows there are other Serpent chapters out there, that all he'd have to do is prove his loyalty and then they'd take him in. He can find safety, find work, start over. For now all he wants to do is put as many miles between himself and Riverdale as he can.

But even while he's revving the bike, urging the engine on, counting through the motels he knows about: what his options are if the storm keeps up, or which one he could aim for if the rain eases and he rides right through the night. Even through all that, through telling himself to _make your goddamn mind blank_, Sweet Pea can't stop the thoughts from coming. He's thinking about his trailer, where he spent those nights with Toni, and Fangs, sometimes both of them together, crashed out and curled up into each other, into him, after riots and raids and god knows what else. It's not much, but it was theirs. He's leaving, and that's his last tie to this ridiculous, hell-on-earth place where everything that happens is straight out of Jughead's sure-to-be-terrible novel. And he's trying not to think about how maybe once he's settled wherever he ends up, he could come back, borrow a truck and collect the trailer, tow it with him to wherever home becomes.

Sweet Pea's wheels spin, taking him beyond the town border, past the edges of the Riverdale map. There's another crack of thunder, but it's not near him yet. He's done. He's gone. But he'll back for the trailer, one day, maybe.

Sweet Pea's bike rips down the roads, taking him further from Riverdale than he's ever been. Once he gets to a straight stretch and the rain eases off, just a bit, he finally gets his mind to go blank. Except for one thought, buried deep under all the others, the ones he doesn't let himself have: _please still be alive, Fogarty. Please still have that key. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! It's been emotional.  
Comments melt my little stone heart.


End file.
